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I have a little problem. I'm addicted to cookbooks, food writing, recipe collecting, and cooking. I have a lot of recipes waiting for me to try them, and ideas from articles, tv, and restaurants often lead to new dishes. I started losing track of what I've done. So now I'm taking photos and writing about what I've prepared—unless it's terrible in which case I forget it ever happened.

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Tuesday, June 30, 2009

This summer is becoming the season of salads, and this one comes from April’s Food and Wine. It’s from Jeremy Fox of Ubuntu which is a restaurant and yoga studio in Napa. The restaurant’s menu focuses on vegetable-inspired meals with daily-harvested and farm-fresh produce. I hope to visit it one of these days, but until then, I have the recipes from the magazine. For this salad, I feared the ingredients might require an extended search mission, and I was ready to make substitutions as needed. Just when I was willing to relent, I easily found both red quinoa and black radishes. Little shopping successes like that give me hope for future ingredient hunts. Once all the items had been gathered, the salad was very simple to assemble.

First, red radishes, black radishes, carrots, and fennel were thinly sliced on a Benriner. Then, the slices were transferred to a bowl of ice water which was refrigerated for an hour. That is what made this salad what it was. The vegetables became incredibly crisp with a lasting, transformed texture. The red quinoa was cooked in water, allowed to cool, and then combined with a simple vinaigrette of lemon juice, lemon zest, olive oil, salt, and pepper. The shaved vegetables topped the quinoa to finish the salad.

It’s so simple, it might even sound boring, but it was light, crunchy, and lemony. The vinaigrette mixed into the quinoa brought plenty of acidity and seasoning for the entire plate. The flavor of the fennel mingled its way among the other vegetables in a nice way, and the cold crispness of the slices were the textural opposite of the cooked quinoa. I hadn’t eaten black radishes before, but the flavor was very mild. The skin was thicker than that of the red radishes, and they seemed a little firmer when being cut. The visual appeal of the contrasting colors and shapes matched the experience of eating the different textures in the salad. Simply put, this was fun to eat, and chilling shaved vegetables is a technique I’ll definitely use again.

this looks great. I have never seen black radishes before, they look cool. I have also never had quinoa before. I will look for some to try this salad out. I am currently collecting fresh healthy recipes like this to make for work lunches.

This is such a gorgeous dish! I don't know how often I've said that quinoa is my next to-make ingredient - thanks for a delicious reminder. As for black radishes, I will keep my eyes open but doubt I'll be as fortunate as you - still, it's worth looking!

Ack! I'm falling behind again - get ready for a flurry of comments throughout the day!

very interesting and colorful ingredients. I've never seen red quinoa before. When Can I find some? Does it hae the same taste and texture as red rice? I bet all the nutrients are much better than the regular one

Black radishes and red quinoA! Wow, I never even knew that existed. Looks like a great salad to try and I love that tip on making it extra crunchy! Still think those black things look a bit scary... :)